ELIDA RUSTA

 

ELIDA RUSTA

 

Awesome Like A Baby's Eyes

 

I had pigeons carry my messages to you,

even though they'd get shot on the way.

Did my love letter ever reach your hand?

 

My Prince wanders elsewhere,

with a satchel of metaphors,

striding from star to star.

More handsome than Sokol Halili*,

who would captivate the Balkan girls riding his brother's steed.

 

My Prince's court is farther than the Moon

and he parks his horses on Mars.

 

I am suffering nicely and, under Shkelzen's** sunlight

 my wounds of 4,000 years are healing;

everything is written in my gene.

Pregnant if I get one fall or one spring,

I'll most certainly give birth to a planet—

awesome like a baby’s eyes

 

 

 

My Freedom Session Is Over

 

There, I am back now.

I miss you every second.

You disappear like a bird's trace on a branch;

like a man's mark in a woman.

 

So, there's no such thing as an iron man!

Those who barely hatch a head out of the quagmire

in vain croak heroic songs.

 

I am going to punch the lake and leave the fishes bereft of breath.

Do you think I am still a high-school cheerleader?

I am the old witch,

with the apple in my pocket.

 

 

 

My Freedom Session Is Over

 

Write to you tomorrow.

 

Mysteries of daily legends

 

Kiss me, sweetheart!

Kiss me right between my breasts

and then feel free to go.

 

Let my breath gasp for air

same as when I,

a green seedling

that had just learnt to toddle around,

made out of you a man

with my first kiss,

while you wouldn't dare to step outside,

too shy of being a kissed man.

 

Kiss me, sweetheart!

Unable to stand your absence a single minute,

I perish amidst burning stars

that turn into showers of illumination for us.

 

Kiss me, with the lit cigarette still on your lips; s

hod as we are,

let's walk into the sea.

Later on, we learn how to swim.

 

Kiss me and see how,

like a true Balkan woman,

I save my ivory love for you

in a chest bearing the scent of quinces

and the clothes for my own funeral.

 

When you kiss me,

I won't die tomorrow!

 

ELIDA RUSTA

 

ELIDA RUSTA was born on August 17, 1971 in the small alpine town of Bajram Curri, Albania. She completed primary school and high school in her hometown. In 1990 she started her studies in Shkodra, at the University “Luigj Gurakuqi”, Faculty of Social Sciences, branch “Language and Literature”, to finish it in 1994. She currently lives and works in Shkodra. She has published two books of poetry: “A Thousand Years of Ajkuna” in 2016 and “Angels Not Holding Hand” in 2019. She is the winner of the first prize for poetry in Detroit, Michigan, “Assembly” Magazine, winner of the first prize in “Naim’s Days” in Përmet, winner of the third “Frang Bardhi” literary award in Belgium, winner of the first prize in the Eleventh Traditional Literary Manifestation “The Hour of Tahir Deskut” in Klina, Kosovo. Winner of the first prize in the 8th Edition of the Manifestation “Poetry Hour” entitled “Dedicated to Love” in Tropoja, Bajram Curri. Member of the Albanian-American Academy of Sciences since August 2017. Ambassador of the “Universal Peace in the World” November 2018. She is a participant with poems translated into English in two World Anthologies, “Atunis Galaxy Anthology 2018; An Anthology Of Contemporary World Poetry” (ISBN:9781387810185) with contemporary authors from around the world and “Atunis Galaxy Anthology –2019” (ISBN: 9780359486762). Both anthologies are published in Washington DC, released in America.